The effect of Obamacare on innovation within the health care sector is staggering. Scott Atlas, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains how the law has begun to change research, development and innovation — activities which traditionally have taken place in the United States — thanks to the ACA’s $500 billion in new taxes, many of which fall on medical device and drug manufacturers. The result? Companies are moving overseas.

Any government-funded health care system must necessarily set limits on medical spending. No government can issue a blank check for unlimited medical care for everyone. The only issue is where and how it draws that line.

This is an inherent part of any socialized medical system, such as in Canada or the UK. Put simply, if you expect “somebody else” to pay for your health care, then “somebody else” will ultimately decide what care you may (or may not) receive. …

Who should decide what care you receive towards the end of your life — you or an “administrative tribunal” of “experts and wise community members”? If you want to retain control over your medical care, you must retain control over your medical dollars. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Make sure the tune being called is the one you want.

The basic issue here is that when you cap prices on services, you end up creating a system in which providers have a huge incentives to bill for more services. As Brookings health policy scholar Dr. Darshak Sanghavi tells the Times, “The notion is you can make end runs around price controls by increasing the number of things you do and bill for.”

Indeed, pricing systems end up creating opportunities for consultants and middlemen to help doctors figure out how to maximize their billing

In The Wall Street Journal, Mark Sklar writes about endlessly entering data or calling for permission to prescribe or trying to avoid Medicare penalties—when should I see patients? Sklar writes:

The patient should be the arbiter of the physician’s quality of care. Contrary to what our government may believe, the average American has the intellectual capacity to judge. To give people more control of their medical choices, we should move away from third-party payment. t may be more prudent to offer the public a high-deductible insurance plan with a tax-deductible medical savings account that people could use until the insurance deductible is reached. Members of the public thus would be spending their own health-care dollars and have an incentive to shop around for better value. This would encourage competition among providers and ultimately lower health-care costs.

We estimate that within 10 years, the number of uninsured Americans may increase by 10 percent. At the same time, premiums will rise faster than federal subsidies. The latter problem will be most severe when insurers release their 2017 rate increases in the summer and fall of 2016—perhaps the most awkward timing for the law’s supporters.

Yet, almost one third of seniors are already in private health insurance plans. They are called Medicare Part C, or Medicare Advantage, plans. And you would be hard pressed to find any Democratic office holder who wants to abolish them. The reason? Seniors choose to be in these plans because they like them better than traditional Medicare.